Maybe one star is harsh considering the talent involved but this was a hard, hard slog. Het hated southern melodramas can work a treat and this was from the creative team who did The Long Hot Summer but I loathed it.
Yul Brynner loses a lot of his on screen power with hair and feels miscast as the horrible uncle. He raises Joanne Woodward, who is too old for her role (she just seems old) and overacts, like everyone else.
Jack Warden plays a deaf mute and might have been effective but has a silly dyed hair. There's some other member of the family played by John Beal who gets one monologue and that's it. Margaret Leighton turns up as Woodward's mum and she overacts. Stuart Whitman comes in as a shirtless sexually harrassing carny worker and he chews the scenery. Warden shares a bed with a little black boy.
Are we meant to be happy that Brynner, who has helped raise Woodward, and reminds everyone of that fact, and seems to be a horrible person, kisses her and they might have a romance? That's incest!
The only cast member who seems at home is Ethel Waters. This movie is terrible.
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